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Comment by nefitty | Hacker News Reader

The offending text:

> To enter the Contest, visit the Contest website located at TBD ('Contest Site') during the Contest Period and follow the instructions for submitting an entry that consists of screenshots or photos of students’ saved work in Scratch (requires CS First account registration for teachers and students) and brief description of why CS First was helpful in the classroom.

Uh, it's not exactly an innovation in propaganda. Aren't lots of contests tied to essay submissions? I assume it ensures that contestants actually value winning and would benefit from the prizes. Yes, it also coincidentally promotes the brand.

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How about if you think of it this way? Manager to team of 24 software developers: "I've opened Google App Engine accounts for all of you, so tomorrow I'll need you all to take an hour from your day and code a little Go project that publicly shares some details on the "heroes" in your lives. You see, I've got a chance to win a prize from Google if you make your projects good enough to impress the contest judges! I'll take care of writing the accompanying essay, in which I'll share some 'inspiring details' about all of us (which I've agreed Google can use in its advertising!) and explain why we all found Google App Engine and Go so helpful. Any questions?" :-)

"The Code Your Hero Social Media Teacher Contest (the 'Contest') is a skill contest where entrants must submit an essay that describes what teachers like best about using CS First for Hour of Code."

I definitely don't have a problem with these kinds of contests. It makes sense that the contest would demonstrate something positive about the program. Teachers who don't like the program aren't likely to get involved.

As such, I found this text more offensive:

> the $50M commitments Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Salesforce, and Amazon made to CS education programs in 2017 were necessary to get Ivanka Trump to work to secure $1B of Federal support to bring computer science to the nation's schools.

It's great if she succeeded in getting the billion, but the fact that it takes 50 million just to get her attention is sad.

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